Chinese Civil War OPCVL

In Yan’an in 1942-1943, Mao had built an efficient instrument by terrorizing his power base, the members of the Communist Party. Now, by the start of 1948, he was terrorizing his economic and cannon-fodder (military) base, the peasantry, in order to bring about total, unquestioning conformity. The result was that the peasants put up little resistance to Mao’s requisitioning (forceful taking) of soldiers, laborers, food, and anything else he wanted for his goals. Mao regarded this process of terrorization as indispensable for winning the war … Although people in the White (non-Communist) areas knew quite a lot about the brutality of the land reform, not least through the hundreds of thousands who escaped, they often attributed it to passing excesses by the oppressed. In any case, they had no way of doing anything to stop Mao’s advance, and having no great affection for the existing regime, often willed themselves to give Mao the benefit of the doubt.